Ode to Sleep
by Joanne Barcia
Summary: "It takes Booth a moment – just one – to find his voice again. And once he does, he starts screaming for help and can't seem to stop."
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: Look at meee, being trash and starting a new story while I've got others open. I couldn't help myself. Whatever haha - this is basically a rewrite of _The Shot at the Target,_ a fic I wrote in good ol' 2013, but the plot will be very different. Both are alternate endings to the season 8 finale, _The Secret in the Siege_ , but reading the other one is not necessary. And I'm going to try to make it a little shorter; don't think I can handle another long-term story haha. Enjoy, and please let me know what you think!**

* * *

 _But I'll tell them,_  
 _Why won't you let me go?_  
 _Do I threaten all your plans? I'm insignificant._  
 _Please tell them you have no plans for me._  
 _I will set my soul on fire - what have I become?  
(I'm sorry.)  
_

\- Ode to Sleep, Twenty One Pilots

* * *

Projectile motion, at least in the world of theoretical physics, is fairly simple. It's all vectors. You've got your object – a baseball, a left sneaker, a speeding car – and you've got your speed. Absolute value of velocity, your magnitude. Just add direction. Positive or negative. Depending on your dimensional plane, X, Y, or Z, that's left or right. Up or down. Away from the pitching mound, towards the back of your shoulder, north on I-95.

Of course, you've also got some long, winded trigonometric equation to use, keeping in mind an acceleration constant of 9.8 meters per second-squared and other such things, but that's beside the point. The _basis_ of it is simple.

Case in point.

The object is a nine millimeter bullet, fired from a military grade weapon by a young, revenge-consumed woman with her hands poised expertly around the handle.

The speed is roughly four hundred meters per second, give or take. A high velocity shot. Mind you, this is the average velocity, not the initial or the final. Wind resistance, friction and the downward pull of gravity, they must all be taken into account.

And the only direction that holds true, no matter what the perspective is – is that it is moving towards the back window of a black mid-size sedan stuck in miles of stand-still traffic. Directly in its path, the back of Lance Sweets' head.

From the perspective of Agent Seeley Booth, watching from where he's standing on the hood of a taxi cab – this direction is very, _very_ negative.

It is only after the trigger is pulled that the sound of that bullet leaving its chamber echoes around for all to hear, for all to holler at and shrink away in fear from. The sound, rising above all the chaos of the city traffic, bounces off every surface within range. Acoustics. A very different branch of physics.

Then there is the study of time – horology – that can't quite explain how things can move in slow motion around him, and yet in reality, events are unfolding far too fast for him to do anything about them.

He blinks. And when he opens his eyes, there's a perfect hole through the back window of Sweets' car. There's a fine spray of blood across the driver's side window, the windshield, every inch of upholstery in sight. Certainly something for blood spatter analysts in forensics to see. It would prove useful in the search for an attacker.

That is, if he needed an investigation. But he doesn't. He's staring right at her, searching for some tiny semblance of remorse in her eyes and finding none.

And finally, there is psychology. Not a branch of physics – not related in the slightest – but a science nonetheless. Perhaps it could explain why, with a purely blank look on his face, he steps off that yellow car, lifts his arms, aims, fires a single bullet in her direction – and feels nothing when he watches her fall to the pavement.

But that's no matter, really. The only practicing psychologist he knows is not available at the moment; so there's no need to even ask the question.

* * *

And then there are angles.

Geometry was never a favorite of Booth's, but as a sniper, he quickly learned that angles were _everything._ Even without the Coriolis Effect to consider, a difference of just a few degrees could be the difference between hitting your mark and blowing your cover – so he learned not to miss.

The woman, still lying unconscious and bleeding on the sidewalk, seems to know how to hit a target just as well as he does. That alone is unnerving enough. But as he sprints through the traffic, he finds himself searching for every possibility that she made a mistake.

Because Sweets isn't dead. He promised that much to everyone on the other end of the phone.

"Sweets isn't dying today," he said through the line. And now what? Is he a damn liar? His heart beats against his ears, a rushing plea for the answer to be _no._ A new scenario pops up in his head with every rough breath he breathes.

The bullet had to go through glass. Perhaps she didn't take it into account when she pulled the trigger.

Or maybe she did. Maybe she took it into account, but overestimated its thickness. Maybe she overcorrected.

Maybe she popped him in the shoulder, somewhere where there's no major artery, and the reason he's not jumping out of his car and wondering what happened is that he pitched forward and hit his head on the steering wheel.

Whatever happened, Lance Sweets just isn't dead.

He can't be.

Booth's heart leaps up into his throat when he comes upon the car; but he doesn't stop. Inertia – as per Newton's third law of motion – demands that much of him.

A crowd has gathered – a group of various people, curious and scared, but far too shell-shocked to do much other than stand around and emote. The agent pushes right through them, goes straight for the door handle, doubting that he'll like what he sees.

He doesn't.

He's prepared to catch Sweets, should he fall sideways, but he doesn't. Instead, the psychologist is slumped the other way, across the console. The pool of blood filling the crevices of the passenger seat is rather unmistakable, terrible and frightening.

He hesitates for a moment – just a moment – before reaching out with trembling fingers. The noise around him could just as well not be there; everything is silent inside his head.

"Sweets?"

The tips of his fingers find their place just behind Sweets' jaw, and Booth just holds his breath.

Nothing.

"No," his voice is no louder than a whisper as he leans further into the car, grabbing at the other side of Sweets' neck with his free hand. "No. No, no, come on, Sweets. You can't die on me now. Not here."

He doesn't recognize the sound of his own voice breaking. Instead, he just closes his eyes, tries to will away tears that have suddenly sprung up. His hands stay right in place.

He pulls in a deep, shuddering breath, and then he feels it. Slowly letting the air out of his lungs, he pushes just slightly harder into his friend's skin.

It's barely perceptible, the faint thrum beneath his fingertips.

He sighs, relieved. An understatement.

"There you go, Sweets! Come on, you're gonna be –"

The word _fine_ dies on his lips as his eyes catch the source of all that blood. While the psychologist's face remains lax, unconscious but intact, the back of his head is split open, bleeding steadily onto the passenger seat.

It takes Booth a moment – just one – to find his voice again. And once he does, he starts screaming for help and can't seem to stop.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: I always have the same problem with multi-chapter stories, where the first chapter is awesome and powerful, and then the second just - falls flat? At least I think so. Better chapters on the horizon, though, bear with me. I'm foreseeing a four or five chapter story here. Please let me know what you think! :)**

* * *

He crashed three times en route to the emergency room, and that's all any of the doctors and nurses on the floor will say.

That's all they _can_ say; it's all they _have._ Information does not fall from fluorescent ceiling lights, especially while surgery to remove a bullet from the back of a young man's head is currently ongoing.

Although, the fact that it is still ongoing is somewhat comforting.

Booth and Brennan and every member of the team in between file into the tiny waiting room, one by one. And they sit. They wait. And at first, they don't say a single word.

But then the first hour goes by without news.

The second.

Part of the third.

Booth pushes himself up out of his seat and stalks over to the window, running a hand over his face. He is quiet for just a moment – just one. And then he speaks.

"I'm going to kill Pelant," he says, hardly more than a whisper. The way he says it, without heat but full of resigned logic, it is pure and incontestable fact.

There is a beat before Brennan glances up at him. She turns her sad eyes his way.

"You've been saying that for the past few months. But you are not a killer, Booth. Not unless it's necessary. Not while you still work within the law."

That, too, is said as fact. A regrettable, unfortunate fact, but true, nevertheless. No one in the room even tries to deny it. Instead, they watch as the conversation starts to phase out.

"Yeah," the agent agrees, sobered. Defeated. "Maybe if I was a killer, Sweets wouldn't be here with a bullet in his brain."

No one tries to deny that, either. They simply let Booth sit back down, fall back into his chair. And they go on waiting.

* * *

Someone finally comes out to speak to them by the end of the fifth hour, when they're all in various stages of dozing off.

A doctor, exhausted and sporting a pair of clean scrubs, a somber expression, walks over and stands, perhaps unsure. It's Cam who meets his eyes, half asleep.

Sitting up straight, she leans over and nudges Booth awake – and the agent is up almost immediately. Still, as he notices the doctor, his movements are slow. He nods at the pathologist and trudges over to the man, as if delaying the news could somehow make it untrue.

If that were the case, he thinks, he wouldn't listen to anything ever again.

The conversation is quick and hushed and bittersweet to its ends as the rest of the waiting group wakes up around them.

Lance Sweets is alive – but the doctor does not say this with confidence. He says it with the sense of uncertainty and unhappiness of a man who just spent hours extracting a bullet from a patient's brain with no sure guarantee of success.

"The bullet was removed without much incident," he says. "But cranial bleeding and swelling always come with… complications…."

He means coma. He means the ever-increasing chance of total brain death. He means the growing possibility that the Jeffersonian's resident psychologist, and their youngest friend, won't make it through the night. He means to say all of this lightly – but perhaps there is no light way to say something like that.

Cam is suddenly standing just behind Booth's shoulder, a mess of desperate nerves.

"What parts of his brain were damaged?" the pathologist in her asks the question. The _Cam_ in her is not quite sure she want to hear the answer.

"The, uh… the bullet went in at an odd angle. Almost as if he was looking up when it hit him, maybe at the traffic light or up at his mirror. It went clean through his occipital lobe, nicked a ventricle. Very minor damage to the cerebellum."

She just stares at him for a moment, turns it around in her head.

"Oh."

And she falls quiet. Booth glances sidelong at her for a brief moment, but ultimately turns his attention back to the physician.

"He is still alive," the man reassures them to the best of his ability. Although, admittedly, he is rather poor at it. "And we have staff monitoring brain activity consistently, but… we're not sure how long we can control the swelling. You might want to consider saying goodbye tonight. Just in case."

And the man just nods and leaves them with that miserable suggestion.

* * *

He is a mess of tubes and needles and wires when they walk into the room – near unrecognizable. With all the equipment blocking the view, they almost miss the sight of Sweets' hair unevenly, almost completely shaved off, even where the gauze doesn't cover. But they see it. They stand and stare and stare and stare, and they see everything – even the things they don't particularly want to see.

(Like all of it, really.)

When Brennan eventually grabs his hand and holds it in her own, she's upset yet unsurprised to find it lax and unresponsive – just like the rest of him.

As the anthropologist begins to speak, her voice a gentle, nervous thing, the people around her pretend not to hear. And the busy themselves in different ways; for instance, Booth keeps his eyes locked on the monitors above the bed and tries to make sense of everything going wrong at once. Angela reaches over to Hodgins' closest hand to her and squeezes it as hard as they both can stand. Cam steps carefully over to the clipboard by the wall and goes through the files, whatever notes and damage specifications the doctors have left open.

Brennan ignores all of this and just talks.

"You know, Sweets," she says, a mock matter-of-factness to her tone. "When I first met you, I did not like you. Not one bit. I found you… over-confident. Inexperienced. And a little bit cheesy. But over time – and I'm still not quite sure how it happened – you found a niche in our family. And it is far from a small one."

She pauses for just a moment, allows herself a ghost of a halfhearted smile.

"You know I tend not to overstate things. And I tend not to lie. So I hope that when I say that you are truly one of my closest friends, and an important member of my family, the weight of that statement will mean something to you."

There's another pause; and if tears start to well up in anyone's eyes, no one says anything about them.

"We're going to catch Pelant, Sweets. For everything he's done – but most of all for doing this to you. And ideally, I would like for you to be there when we do. So fight this, Sweets. Just… hold on for a while. Okay?"

She trails off, as if waiting for a response she won't get. In the wake of all of it, a heavy silence sits upon the air until Brennan finally looks over at Cam, who has yet to take her eyes off the chart in her hands.

"What is it?" she asks, and the pathologist quickly looks up, at a seeming loss for words.

It takes her a moment to find her voice.

"I was just…" she pauses once, and then restarts. "I was looking over what the doctors wrote about the damage to his brain. And I know it's probably a… it's probably not the most important thing when he might not make it at all. But when he said the bullet went through the occipital lobe…"

"Cam, what's wrong?" Booth jumps in where she grows quiet once again.

And she takes a deep breath, resets her composure, and goes on.

"The occipital lobe is basically the vision center of the brain. If the bullet went straight through it, like the doctor said… then chances are that... if he wakes up, that part of his brain might not function. He could be totally blind."

It is just another thing for them to take in stride; and they do. They're not afforded any other options. So that's all they can do.


	3. Chapter 3

**Pretty short chapter, but we're moving right along. I've simultaneously been writing chapter twelve of What You Own, bit by bit, so that should be up soon. Unless I've just jinxed it. Eh. In any case, hope you enjoy! Please leave reviews! :)**

* * *

If they're being perfectly honest, they didn't expect him to make it through the night, despite how much they wanted him to. No one will admit it, but it's the truth. Because if you just stop and think about _statistics,_ that wonderful branch of mathematics centering on odds and chances and likelihoods, it just wasn't _probable_. The five percent survival rate made sure of that fact. And what's more, the Jeffersonian team is simply not accustomed to getting what they want.

And yet, when Booth wakes up to early morning sunlight shining in his eyes and a heart monitor still _beep beep beeping_ in his ear, he helps himself to a slight smile. Surviving the night is not quite the same as surviving forever, but even so – he can recognize when God has thrown him a good sign.

An even better sign – whether from God, as Booth is inclined to believe, or from the tangible improvements in medical technology, as Brennan insists – is that he survives seventy-eight more nights thereafter. Although, if they continue to be honest, each night is eerily similar to the first. Long nights of sitting bedside and waiting and hoping and praying and worrying. Like holding your breath, weighed down underneath the water.

The pit in their stomachs and the nervous fluttering of their hearts are consistent with that, at least.

And by the thirtieth day, their lungs are about ready to burst from desperation. By the seventy-seventh, they've all but given up hope.

The seventy-eighth is the moment of breaking the surface; the moment you finally float to the top, gasping and wheezing and pulling yourself out of the water with shaking arms. The moment you collapse on whatever land there is above, stare up at the sun beating down on you, and just breathe.

* * *

It is Hodgins who notices it first. The slight, but still noticeable stretch of Sweets' fingers, the movement of his hand. With Angela momentarily gone from the room, he's nearly at a loss for what to do or what to think.

Was it even _real?_ Or is he starting to imagine things? Hope and desperation do terrible things to perception, he knows this. And hell if he's going to fall victim to whatever false hope this could turn out to be.

But then it happens again. It's barely there, but he sees it.

"Sweets?" he says without a second thought. His hands close around the call button in an instant, his thumb practically cracking the plastic as he slams down on it.

The psychologist doesn't answer, doesn't even move his hand. Still, the entomologist keeps his eyes trained on Sweets' every detail.

"You there, buddy?"

* * *

The answer was _no._ At least, not yet. As the on-call nurse, a petite blonde woman with a calm disposition, explains to them, comas are tricky. Coming out of them is trickier. Consciousness, contrary to common perception, is not a simple on-off switch. Instead, consider a dial being turned slowly up by a hesitant hand.

Instead of a series circuit, where lights are strung together, either all on or all off – imagine a parallel circuit, wherein each light begins to softly glow of its own accord, one at a time. Current electricity.

According to the Glasgow scale, the woman goes on, he's climbing his way back to them.

And it is a steep slope, indeed.

* * *

When he well and truly wakes, it is day eighty, on the dot. Booth and Brennan sit side by side just next to their resident psychologist, as has been routine for the past two months, and Brennan – vigilant as she ever is – catches not the vague movement of the man's hand, but the minute roll of his head.

Once Booth slams the call button for the umpteenth time in three days, the same nurse as before is back, flying through the door.

Sweets' movements have stopped; but even the untrained eye could see that his breathing has changed into a quick, uneven rhythm. The nurse is gentle, her voice soft as she carefully places her hand over his.

"Hi, Lance," she says. "I'm Karen. I'm a nurse at Providence Hospital; that's where you are right now. You're safe."

She glances over at Booth and Brennan, gives the two a solemn stare, before she looks back down at her patient.

"Do you think you can open your eyes for me, honey?"

It takes a while. But once he pulls his eyelids apart, all he does is _blink, blink, blink._

"There you go," the nurse says with pride, a hesitant smile on her face. But with just once look at Sweets, anyone could see that he is nowhere close to smiling. His eyes have gone wide, and he slowly lifts his shaking free hand to his face.

His fingers don't move quite as well as they should when he runs them over his eyes, but that's hardly the most pressing concern.

As he spends the next few minutes pulling in desperate breaths, the nurse tries her best and hopes it will suffice to say, "Everything's going to be alright. Okay, Lance? Everything's okay."

But it certainly doesn't seem so to Sweets, who finally manages the voice to roughly mumble to her.

"I can't see."

"I know," she replies, patting his hand. That, however, does not slow his breathing or calm him in the slightest. His fingers still rest on the open lids of his eyes, still shaking as much as the rest of him. "But it's all going to be okay. Your friends are right here behind me, okay? Temperance and Seeley."

And they both speak up, two quiet, careful greetings. At the sound of their voices, Sweets allows his arm to clumsily fall part way, reaches his hand out.

"I can't see."

His voice is no louder than an airy whisper, a quiet plea, fear taking up the whole of its volume. That doesn't change – not even when Brennan takes his hand and holds it in hers. Not when Booth lays a firm hand on his shoulder. He turns his head in their general direction, and even if he can't see the tears snaking down his cheeks, everyone else can. And their hearts break at the sight of it.

"I can't see."


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: Things are moving along. One more chapter after this, I think, and that should be it. Thanks for reading, and reviews would be lovely!**

* * *

They say it's permanent.

It takes him roughly four or five times of waking up to a pitch-black room in the middle of the day to remember it long-term. And after each time he forgot, remembering was, without fail, a swift punch in the gut that never stopped aching until he fell asleep again.

They say it's permanent, and that terrifying fact is all he can manage to keep his mind on; it is expansive and all-consuming. It's the only thing he can see.

* * *

One week after he first opened his eyes, once he's able to stay awake for longer than twenty minutes at a time, the doctors tell him that the back of his skull had to be surgically rebuilt, put back together like some fragmented puzzle. He tries to imagine it in his mind's eye, but his mind's eye is so rarely right. He's left with just a hazy idea. Words, words, words – that's all.

Perhaps that's why the words _emergency brain surgery_ and _projectile extraction_ don't scare him as much as they probably should. The bullet in the back of his brain is meaningless, now that it's no longer there. All he's got to attest to how close he'd been to death is the word of the people around him, just vague concepts of coma, brain swelling, bleeding – and it's hard to give any of it that much weight when he's being pumped so full of painkillers. There's just a dizzying, drowsy ache in his head – nothing that could kill him.

Perhaps his own widespread apathy should scare him as much as the fact that he can't see does. But it doesn't.

And he doesn't particularly care.

* * *

"Is someone there?" he asks, his voice still rough from two and a half, bordering on three, months without use. (And God, he hates that. It's bad enough he's got to ask the open air if anyone is standing in it, but now he must do so with a voice so full of weakness and exhaustion.)

He hears someone let out a pent up breath.

"Yeah," the voice of Angela Montenegro echoes across the room. "Hey, Sweets."

"Hey."

And they fall back into the steady hum of near-silence. He can hear her breathing by the doorway, assuring him that she hasn't left yet, and he tries to point his head in her direction. He can't be sure it's convincing, though.

After a minute or so, he tilts his chin slightly up and opens his mouth to speak.

"Angela?" he calls, and she hums a response. He hesitates for a moment. "What do I look like? I mean, right now."

He knows well how he looked back in April. Now in late July, after a certain degree of Hell, he's got no idea.

She pauses before answering.

"Well… you look tired."

"And what does that _look_ like?" he very nearly snaps, very nearly begs for more detail. Something inside him is sorry for the near-outburst, but he can't bring himself to verbalize it.

"It looks like…" she trails off. Sweets can't see the look on her face, and each second she doesn't say anything is another pinprick of worry in his stomach.

She offers a small, disenchanted sigh and says, "It looks like heavy, purple half-circles underneath your eyes. And your face is a lot thinner – almost gaunt. Pale. Your hair… they had to shave it when they brought you in. Once they got the bullet out and your skull was starting to heal, they tried to even it out, but… it still grew back sort of uneven."

Bringing a hand to his head, he first feels the bandages still covering stitches in the back. But around it, he feels his own hair.

"Where's it uneven?"

And he hears the distant-then-close clicking of Angela's heels on the linoleum floor as she comes near and gently grabs his hand. She guides his fingers over different parts of his head.

"See, it's shorter here," she says softly, bringing his hand first to the sides of his head, and then to the front as she finishes, "And longer here. It's not very pronounced, so you can't really notice unless you look closely. But they said once the stitches are out, we can try to fix it."

He nods, vaguely unsatisfied with the lack of details, but entirely unsure of what he can ask to get a better picture.

All he can bring himself to say is, "Thank you."

* * *

Booth and Brennan are back the next day, and he tries to wait an appropriate amount of time before asking them some of his more pertinent questions.

He ends up waiting five minutes and no longer.

"Have you heard from Pelant?" he asks, his voice near deadpan. And as soon as he says it, the room - which had been full of light, if careful, conversation - goes quiet.

It stays that way for a long while, with no answers being offered at all. Finally, Sweets just tilts his head towards where he's fairly sure Booth and Brennan are.

"If I had to guess," he says. "I'd say that the two of you are looking at each other, trying to figure out how to answer the question. Am I right?"

Another pause.

And then it's Brennan who answers with only slight difficulty, "You are correct…. We haven't heard a word from Pelant. He hasn't called or sent anything out, and the woman... the woman who shot you is still awaiting trial."

"It's taking three months to organize the trial?"

"No," she answers. "They've decided to delay it until the person she attempted to kill is able to take part. The district hasn't even decided on a legal team to prosecute her yet. So I don't foresee it starting any time soon."

To that, Sweets nods - before he realizes that nodding still makes his head ache from all sides, and it's something to be avoided for the moment.

He switches topics not quite seamlessly, but quickly nonetheless.

"And how are you?"

Still the same psychologist he's always been – just slightly diluted with lost time and idle sleep. Instead of having to wait for a response this time, it comes far too fast. Almost instantly Booth answers.

"Fine," he says, his tone starting out defensive but finishing soft. "We're fine. We're just glad you're okay."

Sweets considers this for a moment; he considers it a stretch.

"What do you look like right now?"

And the answer, just like before, comes far too soon.

"The same as we did in April."

The psychologist closes his eyes at the statement, tries to imagine it. He has a clear enough picture; he just wishes it was the truth. His jaw tightens for just a moment.

"I'd appreciate it... if you didn't lie to me," he says, his voice shaking again, to his pure frustration. He tilts his head slightly to the left, towards where Brennan should be. "Dr. Brennan - you'll give me an objective answer, I'm sure. What does Booth look like?"

At first, like before, there's nothing. And then there's Brennan's hesitant voice.

"He looks... tired. He got his hair trimmed yesterday, so it's about the same length it was in April, perhaps a bit shorter. But it's messy. Sticking every which way. He also shaved yesterday, for the first time in a while, but it looks like he missed a few spots along his jawline..."

He hears the sound of skin on skin, and he's left to assume it's Booth rubbing a hand over his face at the comment.

"And Booth, what does Dr. Brennan look like?"

"She looks," his voice starts right away, even if there's hesitation in his words. "Beautiful, as usual. She has her hair put up in a bun, and she did her make-up really nice this morning. Thin black eyeliner on the top eyelid. Her clothes are a little wrinkled; she's wearing a purple button-down and jeans. Other than that… she's got that look on her face, the one she gets when she's thinking about something scary but doesn't want anyone to know. Where she purses her lips, and her eyes get all big. But other than that… that's all I can say."

Silence stretches through the room for a few moments before Sweets finally nods his head again, keeping the movement small and slow so as not to jar anything.

"Thank you."

"We're going to catch Pelant, Sweets," Booth says, his voice firm, as if this is more than a promise; it's a fact. To that fact, Sweets can only offer a halfhearted smile.

"I know," he says. "I never doubted that. I still don't."

And the rest – is silence.

* * *

They get him out of bed in the days that follow, and walking turns out to be a bigger challenge than expected – although after three months off his feet, the pronounced muscle atrophy _should_ have been expected. Nonetheless.

It takes a while, but after a time he finds himself shuffling down the hallway, leaning heavily on both the walker they've handed him and the person to his right. And during a brief pause, with sweat running down his temples, his frustration – at being reduced to this, God, to dragging his feet through a hospital, unable to even stand upright without assistance, his head hurting more and more as they wean him off of the painkillers – bubbles up and starts to overflow.

" _How am I even supposed to know where I'm going?"_ he snaps, nearly growls out in a desperate huff. He can't see himself, but he feels his eyes go wide with every emotion he can't quite find the words for. He feels moisture by the corners of his eyes but no tracks down his cheeks. His arms and legs all shake violently – under not only the weight of his own body, but that of everything else combined.

The doctor to his left, soft-spoken and impossibly calm, maintains his patience.

"Well," he says. "Agent Booth is on your right. Remember? You trust him. Just let him help you. He'll guide you."

There are no words after that; the hand on his right shoulder just tightens its grip. And after a few moments more of catching his breath, Lance Sweets gathers himself, nods his head, and stumbles on into the darkness.

* * *

 **A/N: Shamelessly steals line from Hamlet. No matter! As always, I continue to beg for reviews! Next chapter should be up soon. Thanks for reading!**


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: Alrighty, last chapter! Thank you guys for reading and for leaving wonderful reviews! Also, I thought I'd end up answering LMC's question in the narrative, but I'm not really clear, so I'll just say that in my head, he does return to his job, just not to the field. Hope that answers it!**

 **Edit: Took out the Daredevil reference! Thanks for the feedback; I decided it kind of ruined the tone of the story, too, so~~ Aah, anyway, thanks again for reading/reviewing! You're the best!  
**

* * *

It's halfway through August by the time they finally send him home.

It's at a point where he can walk well enough on his own, and it's at a point where he's placed enough trust in the people around him to accept their directions and their help. He's still skinnier than he ever used to be, and to everyone around, he still looks far too breakable, but regardless – he's going home.

The drive is long and loud, with the rush of passing cars and the sounds of the city coming at him from all sides. It is in the back seat of Booth's SUV, as he leans against the window, where he suddenly realizes something else: "I can't drive anymore."

The hint of sadness in his voice is small, and it's mainly said as an incontestable statement, rather than any indication of mourning. Still, neither Booth nor Brennan have any idea what to say to that.

The loss for the right words continues on, especially when they pull up to their destination. Even entering his own apartment, Sweets seems lost and misplaced. While the hospital provided him with a white cane, and while he's more or less figured out how to use it by now, he still manages to earn himself a fair amount of tender bruises by his elbows and hips, directly in line with all the furniture he continues to bump into.

The frustration swings back in full force, and he finds just enough energy to flop face down onto his couch and stay there. He doesn't need a cane – or even his eyes – to do that.

* * *

A hand starts shaking him by his shoulders after who knows how long.

Not that it startles him. He was already awake, and he knows it's Booth. He heard Brennan leave, and to his knowledge, no one else ever came in since.

He hums a response, not bothering to form words until he knows what Booth wants.

"Come on," the agent is saying softly, his hand still resting by the edge of Sweets' shoulder. "You should get up. Doctors said you have to keep getting used to your apartment, and lying on the couch won't help you do it."

"Not right now."

Sweets lets out a pent up breath and directs it upwards, so he can feel the slight movement of his hair by the top of his forehead. The weight of Booth's hand is still ever-present on his shoulder.

"Nope. Come on, Sweets – time to start doing things. If you want, we can go somewhere else instead. Grab something to eat, maybe. Whatever you want."

"I'm not hungry. My head hurts."

He says it first to be an excuse, but the more he thinks about it, the more he thinks it's the truth. The dull ache is back, making the back of his head pulse uncomfortably – but he supposes this is just one less thing to weigh down on his conscience.

Booth doesn't say anything to that at first, and for a moment, Sweets considers closing his eyes again and going right back to sleep, but decides against it. He can't quite see the point in that, either.

He hears Booth sigh from somewhere out in the living room, offer a quiet, "Fine."

And after a few more seconds, there's the sound of Booth walking across the room to where the bookcase might have been before; there's the sound of rummaging.

"Why don't we put something on, then? Huh? A DVD or something."

Scratch the bookcase, then. It must be the television set Booth is standing by; if Sweets can remember correctly, he keeps every disc he owns on a rack just next to it. Not that he has much use for them anymore anyway. He opens his mouth and starts to lament that fact, but Booth beats him to it.

The rummaging having stopped, Booth's voice echoes across the room.

"' _The X-Files: the Complete First Season.'_ How about it, Sweets? You love that show."

He doesn't need to be reminded. Still, his voice is flat as he answers.

"I've seen every episode twice." And he supposes he'll never properly _see_ them again.

The television set turns on with a crackle and a click, and the sound of the DVD tray sliding out is nice. It's familiar.

"I'm going to take that as a yes," Booth says, and before Sweets can say anything more, the agent is gently pulling him up into a sitting position so he can sit beside him as the show starts. And at first, it's all ominous music. But then it fades into the sound of someone running, someone breathing hard, and Booth starts to talk over it: "There's a girl running through the woods. She's got long red hair, and she's not wearing any shoes. All she's got on is a white nightgown. The trees around her are moving with the wind, and it looks like something's following her…."

A smile creeps its way onto his face throughout the first episode without his noticing; and by the end of it, he finds he's perfectly willing to move on to the second. Then the third. The fourth.

They spend the night that way, until Booth finally notices the time and sets off for the guest room down the hall. Sweets eventually finds his way to his bedroom without any more bruises.

They spend the next week that way, until Sweets knows his own apartment well enough again to manage on his own.

* * *

"I'm trusting you on this one… okay? I'm trusting you," Sweets says, only half joking. He's got a pair of shaded glasses in his hands, and he's trying his best to feel how the frames must look. Hodgins told him they were square, but that wasn't _good_ enough. Once he's got an idea – square-looking wire frames, curved by the corners, not too long – he carefully slides them onto his face and asks the people in front of him how they look.

Angela's hum of disapproval is certainly not lost.

"I don't think a square frame works," she's saying, gently pulling them off Sweets' face without warning. He only hears her grabbing different sets from the wall behind him and analyzing them out loud. "A square frame sort of matches the angle of your eyebrows, but that's it. It doesn't match the shape of your face or anything else…. These might work. Feel these."

A pair of circular – no, oval-shaped – frames are placed into his hand, and he considers the pair. He puts them on without a word.

"Perfect," Angela says, and Hodgins echoes her.

"I like them."

"You're sure?" Sweets is asking the both of them. And he receives silence as an answer at first, and then a rushed hum of affirmation.

"We were nodding," Hodgins admits, and then apologizes for it.

"It's fine," Sweets says, half-way smiling. "I figured. Thank you."

* * *

Someone thrusts a piece of paper into his hands without warning, and after a second of confusedly looking out into the air, Brennan remembers to announce herself. There's something in her voice, he thinks – something akin to excitement. And as they're sitting back in Sweets' apartment as opposed to the Jeffersonian, with furniture and pictures around them instead of bones, he would be interested in knowing what's got her so happy.

He supposes the paper in his hands has something to do with it. There's just one problem with that.

"You know I can't read this, right?" he says, and Brennan doesn't reply until she's got him by the hand and is leading him to somewhere across the room.

"I am aware," she answers, matter-of-fact as always, as she sits him down on a familiar padded bench. He smells the fresh lacquer on the piano that's always been there, hears and feels Brennan sit down next to him and continue. "Feel the paper."

He does as he's told. It doesn't help much.

"Still can't read it. I don't know Braille yet."

"Then I'll tell you what it is," she decides. As she explains it, Sweets doesn't move his fingers off the page. "It's sheet music. There's a whole different organizational system for Braille music, and I'm confident you'll learn it quickly. Statistically, the average person learns Braille in about four months, and with your high intelligence and aptitude, I expect you'll be affluent long before then."

He smiles; he thinks for a moment that it's the closest thing to a compliment he's ever heard from her.

"Thank you, Dr. Brennan," he says, and he means every syllable. He pauses for just a moment. "What… what song is it?"

"It's a simple song. I know your skill level on the piano is much higher, but nevertheless… it's an arrangement of Jay Ungar's _Ashokan Farewell."_

Gently, Sweets reaches forward and lifts the cover off the keys. His smile doesn't fade.

"I actually know it. My mom actually taught me how to play it. One of the first things I learned."

He runs his hands over the keys, his fingertips going back and forth over the cool plastic. He hesitates.

And he plays what he can remember, nearly bringing himself to tears. He never needed to see the piano to play; after all, he'd done it with his eyes closed countless times.

From the first note to the very last chord, for just these two short minutes – it's as if nothing changed.

* * *

Five months since the day Sweets came home, on some early morning in late January, every member of the team is woken by the same case; it reminds them all of one crucial thing: Problems never just disappear.

Especially not when those problems go by the name of Christopher Pelant. Problems like him – they linger. And they taunt.

His next message for them comes in the form of another body, dumped unceremoniously in a far too familiar way.

The case begins with the remains being moved to the Jeffersonian, but the wheels start moving in Booth's office, with Sweets leaning against the edge of the desk, his glasses perched on the tip of his nose. He hears the muted clicks of the mouse and the rhythm of the older man's typing, and once it fades into silence – well, he's got a fair idea of what the agent must be looking at.

"What does the crime scene look like?" the profiler asks carefully, if the slightest bit impatiently. As if he wants to hear the answer but is afraid of what it might be. It comes in due time.

Booth lets out a heavy sigh, already on edge.

"A body dumped in the woods by a picnic table," he says. "Just like the one last year from one of your papers. Except... _after_ the victim died, someone... there's a hole in the back of the skull."

And then there's silence, a long stretch of nothing between them. Then Sweets speaks, his voice quiet - but still holding power in it that Booth hasn't heard in a long, long time.

"We're gonna catch him," he says, and he leaves it at that. Whether it's to assure Booth or himself is anyone's guess, but regardless -

Booth places a hand on the psychologist's shoulder and firmly nods.

"Yeah," he agrees. "We will."

A beat.

"Let's get to work."

* * *

 **A/N: And here would be the end of the alternate ending, where it would segway back into the series canon. Thanks again for reading you guys! Leave one last review?**

 **PS - if any of the regular anonymous reviewers (you know who you are) have other social media accounts, please let me know! I'd love to reply to reviews sometimes, or just follow y'all in general haha. Thanks!**


End file.
